


someone his size

by eggfish



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Ficlet, First Meetings, Gen, It's not a shipfic but I think it's okay to go in the tag, Pre-Canon, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 19:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15150572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggfish/pseuds/eggfish
Summary: When he opens the door on his new roommate, Yuzuru notices three things right away. The first is that the boy is shorter than him - he’d known it would be someone around his age, but after being surrounded by adults for months it’s quite a shock. The second is the glasses - a rare sight. The third is the soft, dark bruise flowering out delicately from his left cheekbone.





	someone his size

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this in the month after Gang gacha was released but it didn't feel right to post it until I'd read an actual translation of the story, so, here I am months later...? I hope you enjoy reading~

When he opens the door on his new roommate, Yuzuru notices three things right away. The first is that the boy is shorter than him - he’d known it would be someone around his age, but after being surrounded by adults for months it’s quite a shock. The second is the glasses - a rare sight. The third is the soft, dark bruise flowering out delicately from his left cheekbone.

The boy salutes lazily. “Hey. I’m Saegusa Ibara. I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of each other from now on. I’ll be in your care.”

Yuzuru gives him a slow once-over. Insolent posture, sloppy appearance, scrawny, and most of all that shit-eating smile. He can already see how the bruise got there. He sighs and shakes his head. “Fushimi Yuzuru. Now… Ibara, is it? Sorry, but I can’t accept this standard of behaviour from you, Ibara.”

Ibara laughs, a startlingly loud and humourless noise. “Ah-ha-ha! What the hell are you on about? Also wow, why are you already so prissy? I can feel it coming off you in  _ waves _ . Totally doesn't blend in to a place like this. Don't tell me you’re -”

“I’ve been assigned as your superior officer, Ibara, you aren't in a position to talk back to me,” Yuzuru warns him with some satisfaction. “Now, stand to attention.”

“Fucking weird roommate you are already,” Ibara mutters, but he does as he’s told.

“Back straight, chest out, chin up; make some effort, please.” He adjusts Ibara’s posture himself, chucking him under the chin with a finger to get him neat and perfect. Ibara growls. Yuzuru likes neatness. He likes a job well done. He’ll do a good job with this boy too.

“Salute!” Ibara does. “That’s enough.”

“You’re just like the rest of them, aren't you,” Ibara says, eyeing him. “You joined up ‘cause you get off on power and you wanted to shoot guns or whatever.” He grins. “The higher-ups were really fucking stupid to think they could keep me out of trouble by transferring me here! Nowhere is safe in this world, _ah_ -ha-ha!”

“Don’t waste your breath on appealing to my sense of pity. Come in.”

Ibara slinks into the room proper, surveys Yuzuru’s belongings and the empty top bunk. He whistles. “Christ, you’re a neat freak. I’ve gotten out from the frying pan and into the fire here.”

“It’s just force of habit,” Yuzuru says, not mentioning that it’s essentially his hobby too. He really does enjoy perfectly using a skill he’s learned, and the feeling that no stone has been left unturned - that everything is marked as his territory. ”Although cleanliness _is_ a virtue, of course.” He eyes the dirt under Ibara’s fingernails. “That makes me think…”

And so he manages to drag Ibara to the showers before dinner too. The boy is a greasy mess, was probably avoiding someone who'd threatened to harm him when he didn't have the protection of a blade hidden on his person (yes, Yuzuru has already been treated to an attack from a shaving razor held tight in the boy’s fist, and has already confiscated it). He scrubs himself under the next showerhead over, reminds Ibara to wash behind his ears, and neatly dodges the bar of soap thrown at his head.

When they get back to Yuzuru’s room again Yuzuru holds out his hairbrush and one of his tiny elastic ties. Ibara stares at them, indignant.

“I don't need to brush my hair. I’m not a _girl_. Fuck off.”

“Language, Ibara! And you’ll need to, now, unless you prefer cutting all your hair off.”

“Why _._ ”

“So that you look well-groomed.”

“Well-groomed - like a dog? Is that what you are? Whoa, it all makes so much sense now. You do nothing but suck up to your owners and _whine_ and you won't leave me alone for thirty seconds, yeah!”

“...You’ll fit in better this way. When you fit in to the system, you can start to benefit from that system.” It’s the logic he’s lived his life by.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha- _ha!_ The _system_ \- it isn't worth a single grain of rice, stupid! It’s money and power that run this world - they can bust through any rules and regulations in an instant! The world is full of double standards, didn't you know? Is your puppy brain too small to understand?”

Does he have to be so insistently, devotedly negative? It’s hard to argue with him, though, when Yuzuru doesn’t have a shred of evidence to the contrary.

He sighs. “You also look like a child who can’t perform basic self-care and I wouldn’t want to be seen in public with a guy like that. Stand still.”

He steps around behind Ibara, who tenses.

“I won’t hurt you or do anything weird behind your back,” Yuzuru tells him.

“I never said you would.”

“Your body language says otherwise. You need to get better at controlling your posture if you want to conceal your weakness. Straighten your spine, now,” and he taps on Ibara’s back until he obeys.

Ibara _tch_ s and fidgets back and forth and tenses more as Yuzuru brushes the tangles out of his damp mop of hair. It must be quite painful, actually. A lot of hair comes out in the brush. It looks better afterward, though, and runs obediently, smoothly through Yuzuru's hands as he gathers up the longest parts to tie into a ponytail. He steps back around and brushes Ibara’s fringe into portions too.

“There, you’ve cleaned up nicely,” Yuzuru says, satisfied with the result. Ibara looks, well, decent now, even if his personality problem and his bruise both remain extremely obvious.

“Neat freak,” Ibara mutters, just loud enough for Yuzuru to hear, before raising his voice to obnoxious. “I mean, wow, thank you _ever_ so much, Instructor, sir. I feel _so_ good being all prettied up like a doll.”

“It’s pretty normal to do this much. Didn't your parents ever teach you to take care of your appearance properly?” Yuzuru tuts disapprovingly. “You should listen to your elders once in a while, you know?”

“Ha! They haven’t taught me a thing. My orphanage didn’t teach me much either. Not that I was there for long.” Oh.

Yuzuru rolls his eyes deliberately. “Wow, what a sad and lonely life you’ve lived. I can see why you’re in such an … unpleasant state now.”

“Okay, _now_ who’s being rude, you hypocrite! I am the way I am because I want to be - no other reason!”

Yuzuru tilts his head. “Huh? That’s really not the part I expected you to take offense at.”

Ibara puffs out his tiny chest. “I’m completely free, for real, in this world. No family, no friends, no morals, no obligations - I’m in control of myself, more than anyone else! I’m not insulted if you don’t like me or how I act. In fact, it’s a good thing. Means I haven’t lost my edge.”

Ibara is full of so many alien thoughts and attitudes. Free? In control? What an odd idea. Surely he is more powerless than anyone else, having no property, no allies, no education or qualifications.

Ibara snorts. “I guessed you wouldn’t get it. Rather than doing what you were taught was right, have you ever made a decision for yourself? In your entire life? ‘Cause it really doesn’t look like it.”

Rather than replying Yuzuru walks past him. “Come on. We’re gonna be late.”

“Oh, for mess? Instructor, sir, won’t you give me all your dinner tonight, since you feel soooo bad for me and we’re suuuuch good friends now?”

“I might have to take some of yours as punishment for bad behaviour, actually.”

Ibara smiles widely. “Wow! I hope you choke and die while eating it in that case!”

Yuzuru smiles back. “I wasn’t being serious, you know. Grow up strong and healthy, Ibara, with a good diet.”

“Sir yessir, Instructor, sir! Salute!”

“Don’t take that kind of sarcastic tone with me either, Ibara, and use my name - or have you forgotten it already…?”

It’s Ibara’s turn to ignore him and skip ahead, now, making a beeline for entrance to the mess hall - Yuzuru grabs him by the scruff of his shirt before he can barge in at the front of the queue, though of course he continues to protest about how he’s slippery enough to sneak inside unnoticed.

Yuzuru insists he will do no such thing, and turns to haul him to the back of the line. That’s when he realises just how _light_ Ibara is. Like he talks so much shit to make up for a fundamental lack of substance. He’s fragile - and the images start to fit together in Yuzuru’s mind. The childish toss of his head as Yuzuru scolded him - his ribs poking out in sharp relief under soft soap suds - the feeling of brushing his hair, running the bristles of the brush close against his skull. A little green-eyed boy sitting alone in his playroom. A voice, telling him, _This one needs protecting. That is your duty._

Was this what it was going to feel like, then? Tending to an impetuous, egocentric young master who could barely hold his own chopsticks and wanted nothing more than to be rid of him? If that was the case, he didn't know that he wanted it at all.

“I said _let go_ of me, you bitch,” Ibara says, interrupting his thoughts. He wriggles out of his grip snakelike and twists and rushes suddenly up-close to finally throw the first punch that’s been waiting between them, jab the first painful elbow in his stomach. Yuzuru responds in kind, reverting to battlefield instincts, and suddenly it’s _good_ to be matched against someone his size - Ibara is a dirty fighter, and Yuzuru grits his teeth and fights his hardest just to pin down the slippery little brat, and to fend off the fangs and fingernails that come whipping at him. Win or lose. Kill or be killed. This is so much simpler. This is so much cleaner -

The adults come to separate their little scuffle almost immediately, of course. They don't get any dinner at all that night, and Yuzuru resolves not to resort to violence so easily next time, even if Ibara had been provoking him to a frankly unbelievable extent. He resolves to forget - about how even as they’d pulled him off Ibara, he’d been breathing hard, adrenaline burning through the pit of his stomach and pain searing his flesh - and he’d thought for just a moment, _this is where I want to stay_.

He forgets about it quickly, because after all he has excellent resolve. He returns to his obedience, his aloofness, and his duty. But the feeling remains somewhere inside him. And unseen, it begin to spread its roots. Just like poison.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Akira for Gang gacha every part of it was golden *cries for the 100th time* I had such fun writing this, I think these two's... weird childhood friendship.. is so fascinating and cute T_T  
> and btw, my twitter is @star_goldfish if you wanna hmu, i really love enstars and i'm always down to chat about it~


End file.
